Although Colorado’s 64 counties each have a public trustee, 52 are that county’s elected treasurer. Denver’s is its elected clerk and recorder; Broomfield’s is its revenue manager.

The remaining 10 — in Adams, Arapahoe, Weld, El Paso, Mesa, Jefferson, Larimer, Boulder, Douglas and Pueblo counties — are appointed by the governor without approval or review by the senate or a local governing body. Each is paid more than $72,000 a year and operates a budget outside the control of local authorities.

A law passed last year requires them to submit budgets for review but not approval. The bill began as a measure to remove the appointments from the governor’s control but was rewritten.

In SB 22, Lambert said he wanted local officials to have a say in who serves as trustee.

“It’s high time that we do away with political patronage appointments from Denver that override local control by the people,” Lambert said. “The current system is not public and is rapidly losing trust.”

Testifying for the Colorado Public Trustee Association against the bill, Fremont County Treasurer and Public Trustee Patricia McFarland said the workload was too much for large counties to merge the two offices. The bill would merge only the trustee position itself, not the staffs. Five of the six board members who head the association are appointed trustees.

Another bill, HB 1049, that takes aim at the appointments is to be heard in a House committee next week.

David Migoya: 303-954-1506, dmigoya@denverpost.com or twitter.com/davidmigoya

David is a member of the Investigations Team and has been at The Denver Post since 1999. He was a founding member of the team before moving on to cover banking, finance, human services, consumer affairs, and business investigations. He has also worked at newspapers in New York, St. Louis and Detroit over a 35-year career.

More in News

The Denver Art Museum plans to funnel a $25 million one-time gift into the estimated $150 million budget for renovating its iconic North Building in time for the structure’s 50th anniversary in 2021, officials announced Thursday.

President-elect Donald Trump is expected to name fast-food executive Andrew Puzder, a vocal critic of substantially increasing the minimum wage and an opponent of rules that would make more workers eligible for overtime pay, as head of the Labor Department.